UW Highlights

Wyoming Public Media

As Wyoming’s only university, the University of Wyoming is committed to explore, create, and share knowledge. Wyoming Public Media captures the work of scholars, learners, and leaders who are committed to serving the state of Wyoming and contributing to national and international intellectual growth. You can hear some of our stories and features on these pages. They reflect the work of hundreds of individuals dedicated to the University of Wyoming vision to imagine the future and to create it.

In the early 20th century, tribal members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma became extremely wealthy after discovering oil underneath their reservation. Then, dozens of Osage members started turning up murdered in a vast conspiracy meant to redirect their wealth into the hands of white men.

In the recent book Killers of the Flower Moon, author David Grann explores this chapter in American history. Grann visited the University of Wyoming as a guest lecturer, and Wyoming Public Radio's Caroline Ballard spoke with him about how he first became interested in the Osage Indian Murders and their legacy.

The ENDOW initiative is Wyoming’s latest attempt to diversify its economy. For author Samuel Western shaping the state's future, requires an examination of how Wyoming imagines its past. Western will explore this idea and lead a discussion at the University of Wyoming on April 5.

The University of Wyoming played host to Keio University Professor Dr. Toshi Nakayama on Wednesday. He is a noted author and columnist on international relations and he spoke about how Japan is adapting to Trump’s America on the world stage. He joins Wyoming Public Radio’s Bob Beck.

A new effort at the University of Wyoming is designed to turn academic research into businesses. The creation of the Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship got a vote of approval from the UW board of trustees last week.

The University of Wyoming board of trustees has increased tuition by 4 percent again this year. In 2014, the board passed a policy to increase tuition every year unless they voted not to. This year the administration and the student government recommended against charging students more.

The University of Wyoming’s Salary Policy Task Force presented findings to the Board of Trustees Thursday confirming that staff are paid below average when compared to peer institutions and relevant industries. The task force was appointed by President Laurie Nichols last August after staff raised concerns about salary distribution.

Representatives from the University of Wyoming and the state’s community colleges testified before the Senate Education Committee Friday asking lawmakers to approve a bill that would create a common transcript.

Currently, UW and the community colleges use separate systems for awarding course credits. Casper Senator Bill Landen said that means students end up losing credits and having to retake classes. He said his own daughter brought this issue to his attention.

When school shootings occur, the country collectively asks: what needs to happen to keep students safe? What does it take to identify students who are struggling and get them support? Wyoming Public Radio’s education reporter Tennessee Watson sat down with University of Wyoming Professor of Counseling's Mary Alice Bruce and graduate student Ken Hilton to talk about how school counselors fit into the conversation about safe schools.

On Saturday, the University of Wyoming will host a symposium on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. The event comes as the date March 5th looms over the immigration debate—that’s the deadline President Donald Trump gave Congress to find a solution for the almost 700,000 undocumented immigrants covered by the program.

Jennet Nedirmammedova a senior at the University of Wyoming invited me into her apartment, a couple of blocks from campus. It, is cozy – a couple of rooms with paintings on every wall. She cooks was cooking pasta, and offers me some as we sit down at a wooden table edging her kitchen and the stairway. Nedirmammedova came to Wyoming from Turkmenistan to study environmental science, and she has since added a second major in religious studies, plus two minors. She also works two jobs.

The football season may be over, but the conversation around concussions marches on. The day before the Superbowl, the NFL gave three winning companies $50,000 each to help them develop superior athletic technology.

A paper published by a former University of Wyoming graduate student shows recent temperatures across Europe and North America are at unprecedented highs. The report, titled "Reconciling Divergent Trends and Millennial Variations in Holocene Temperatures” looked at climate patterns over the past 11,000 years.

The spring semester season of the University of Wyoming’s Cultural series gets underway next week. Janelle Fletcher is the Director of Fine Arts Outreach and Cultural programs at the University of Wyoming. The season features a wide range of programs including some amazing acrobats. She joins Wyoming Public Radio’s Bob Beck.

In the world of Paleontology, there’s debate whether or not dinosaurs were warm or cold blooded, and just how quickly they grew up. Dr. Michael D’Emic is a Paleontologist at Adelphi University in New York. He spoke with Wyoming Public Radio’s Maggie Mullen in anticipation of a talk he will give on the University of Wyoming’s campus about his research and some of the contentious debates surrounding dinosaurs.

Dr. D’Emic’s talk is February 6 at 5:30 p.m. on the University of Wyoming’s Campus in room 216 of the S.H. Knight Geology Building.

The University of Wyoming has seen a serious decline in enrollment of Native American students. The new university president set a goal to reverse that, opening a Native American Center and hired a Native American program advisor to make the campus more welcoming. And those efforts are working. But now there isn’t enough money to fund all the interested students applying.

Northern Arapaho Chairman Roy Brown said part of that is because his tribe is growing quickly: 10,300 members strong. And he said, 40 percent of those members are kids.

The University of Wyoming wants to increase its student body. To do that, the trustees are looking at attracting more out-of-state students by decreasing their tuition. But does that mean the university has exhausted efforts to get more students from Wyoming to enroll?

At a University of Wyoming Board of Trustees meeting last week, the chairman of the Northern Arapaho Tribe, Roy Brown, made the case for giving Wyoming’s tribal students a tuition waiver.

He said, thanks to efforts to recruit more Native Americans, the Northern Arapaho Endowment Scholarship was flooded with more qualified applicants than they could serve for the first time in the scholarship's history.

Northwest College in Powell hosted the first Wyoming Agriculture Diversification Summit this week. The two-day conference invited agriculture business leaders from around the country to present innovative ideas to state producers and business sponsors.

David Stover, the owner of a consulting firm on innovation and strategy, said the key to innovation is to understand what assets and competencies already exist. He said two assets stand out in Wyoming, including access to water.

New research at the University of Wyoming shows that healthier female bighorn sheep with access to more nutritious food tend to be bigger and to raise bigger rams. The study suggests allowing hunters to kill more female bighorn sheep could reduce competition for such a nutritious diet. The study builds on other research of unhunted bighorns in California.

Back in November, conservative radio talk show host Dennis Prager spoke to a packed audience at the University of Wyoming. After the applause died down a bit, he said, “I’m sure not all of you feel that enthusiastic about seeing me but nevertheless…”

And it was true. Many students weren’t enthusiastic for him to come, calling some of his talks racist and sexist. In fact, they argued university money shouldn’t be used to pay for such controversial speakers.

The Harry W. Colmery Veterans Educational Assistance Act was one of the bipartisan triumphs of 2017. Referred to as the “Forever GI Bill,” it makes significant changes to education benefits for service members and veterans, like no longer requiring them to use their benefits within 15 years of active-duty service. But supporting veterans in higher education is more complicated than just giving them more time.

Marty Martinez spent 29 years in the military before coming to the University of Wyoming.

After years of going without one, the University of Wyoming has hired a new Native American Program Advisor. President Laurie Nichols has said the goal is to try to increase the Native student enrollment so that it better reflects the Native population in the state.

The University of Wyoming is teaming up with the Center of the West in Cody to research archeological materials not typically found in most of Wyoming and the Mountain West.

Most of Wyoming’s archeology focuses on rocks, tools, and bones with knife markings, but as part of a new class, ten students will be looking at perishable items going back about 11,000 years. Brigid Grund, one of the class’s instructors, said it’s important to open students’ minds to the possibilities that perishables hold.

The University of Wyoming’s Physics and Astronomy Department has received two grants for research related to finding exoplanets, or planets orbiting other stars. Dr. Michael Pierce and Dr. Hannah Jang-Condell received grants from Indiana University and NASA worth almost $1 million. The funds will primarily be used to build a spectrograph, an instrument that can gather detailed information about star movement near planets.

Earlier this fall, the University of Wyoming sent emails to law school students with concerns about the 37-year-old man who shot at police officers in Highlands Ranch, Colorado on Sunday morning.

Matthew Riehl was a UW Law School graduate who at one time practiced law in Wyoming, and a veteran who served in Iraq. Matthew Riehl had been posting threatening and irrational statements about law school faculty, according to UW Police Chief Mike Samp.

Scientists at the University of Wyoming have discovered an insect thought to be extinct in the region in four streams in the Tetons.

The glacier stonefly was believed to only survive in streams in Glacier National Park and the Beartooth Absorka Range in Montana. UW Invertebrate Zoologist Lusha Tronstad said the discovery has put the decision-making process on hold over whether to list the species.